Overseas Stars Honing Skills for NT Duty

Japan is in a good position to qualify for their sixth consecutive appearance at the World Cup. Vahid Halilhodzic will hope that his stars continue to impress at their respective clubs, remaining sharp for the five remaining qualifying matches coming up in 2017

Japan - Australia

Japan Enters a New Era

After the solid performance put in by a host of relatively new NT players last week, against Oman, Halilhodzic took a bit of a gamble and benched his star attacking unit of Honda, Okasaki and Kagawa, replacing them with three players who have only two dozen NT caps between them. The result proved that a new era is dawning for the Samurai Blue.

Japan - Iraq

Japan's campaign for a berth in the 2018 World Cup received an enormous boost on Thursday evening, as birthday boy Hotaru Yamaguchi's injury-time blast carried Japan past the Lions of Mesopotamia, and put their qualification campaign back on track.